Category Archives: writer’s platform

poetry, Robert Frost, writer's platform, Writing

I Should Be Writing

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Back from the funeral, no major household projects going on, reasonable workload at the office, no upcoming trip to prepare for, the checkbook mostly up to date, household finances needing only 30 minutes to bring them up to date. I should be writing. But I’m not.

Yesterday I posted one of my older poems for critique at the Absolute Write poetry forum. Three crits later it’s sinking and will hit the oblivion of page 2 today. That caused me to pull out Father Daughter Day yesterday and go through it last night and mark edits that had either accumulated in my mind or that I saw as I read. That’s done, and I’ll type those edits today sometime. And I did a very minor critique of another person’s poem yesterday.

More than a week ago I began a new article for Suite101.com, about preparing for a deposition. Since I had just done that, I thought it would make for a good article, quickly written. Then the funeral trip interrupted me, and I haven’t felt like getting back to it. I even did some key word research using some Google tools, and it looks as if it will be a profitable article. Yet, I just don’t feel like writing it.

I suppose I’ll snap out of it soon. Maybe if I get those few entries made in my financial spreadsheet I’ll feel freed-up to write again. I think what’s holding me back is the utter futility of it all. And the realization I’m trying to build a platform that may or may not grow to the size I need. My articles on Suite 101 are getting page views at a current rate of 80,000 per year. That’s good! Eighty-thousand people a year are reading my stuff. But almost none of those people are looking for my writing. They are looking for information on something, and happen to find mine by a search engine. So will an editor see all those hits and all those people reading my writing as evidence of a platform and quality writing, or as an accident?

Still, I’ve nothing else to do but plunge back in and get some more articles up. Three more and I begin earning a ten percent bonus. I could have three articles up in three days. I’ll do it. I’ll probably get that one article finished and post it tonight, and shoot for having two more up by Sunday. During our weekend trip I worked on the analysis of another Robert Frost poem. That will give me at least three articles.

I still need to articulate steps two and three of my platform-building plan. Maybe I’ll make that my next post.

Documenting America, writer's platform

Platform, Part 1

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In a previous post, I said I would write something about platform building ideas I have.

First, though, for non-writers who might stumble by and read this blog, I’d better explain what I mean by platform. This is what publishers would call a writer being able to bring a ready-made audience waiting to buy the writer’s book(s). For non-fiction, it could be credentials. For fiction, it could be a fan base developed through notoriety not related to writing. Think of someone like Bill O’Reilly, who can get any book published he wants, good or bad, because of his huge fan base and ability to promote is book to that fan base. His writing may be good or not; having never read any of his books or columns I don’t know. But publishers will enter bidding auctions on his books because of his platforms.

Other examples are Jewell and Paul McCartney for their poetry. Do they write good poetry? I don’t know. But people will buy their poetry books simply because of who they are. Or consider Joel Osteen and his books. A church of 5,000 people (or more) and a television ministry provides him with a ready made fan base. And those are tremendous places for him to sell his books.

Most agents or editors, when considering the book of a first time author, will ask (even for fiction), “What is your platform? Do you speak before large groups? Do you have a web site with lots of traffic? Do you have special credentials? How many potential buyers can you bring to the publishing house?”

Now, I don’t know that that is particularly fair to expect of a potential new author. But my not liking it is not going to change it.

Can a new author break in without a platform? Sure, but the odds are really against it. So, being an unpublished author, I can enhance my abilities to break in by establishing a platform. But what to do? I have no speaking ministry, and am unlikely to begin one. Indeed, with a full time job I’m unable to begin one. I have no special credentials for religious or political non-fiction books, so that would seems to be out.

One possibility is to review my idea of Documenting America, my newspaper column. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, as the second post to this blog attests. On several other occasions I wrote about this, even coming very close to saying I was going to do it, until circumstances in life made me decide not to.

But, if I could do it, and get a few papers to carry it (if all newspapers don’t die in the next year or so), it would be a platform-building possibility. I need to revisit my decision to cast this idea aside. I’ll take a couple to critique group on Thursday and see what reaction they get.

In a future post, I’ll write about another platform-building idea I have.

Health, writer's platform, Writing

Clarity

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Yesterday morning, as soon as I rose and completed my new litany of exercises (six straight days now), I began a morning walk. My destination: the post office, to mail some bill payments. The post office is about 7/10 ths of a mile away, over fairly level road. However, I wanted a longer walk that that.

So I walked down every side street off Sherlock Road. By way of explanation, Bella Vista is all hills, ridges, and steep valleys–hollows, the locals call them. Collector streets are built on ridge lines, and local streets are cul–de-sacs off the main roads, following finger ridges till they plunge into the hollows.

On the way to the post office, walking on the left side, of course, that meant I had to walk down four side streets. Of course, that meant I had to walk up to get back to the main road. Coming back from the post office, I had three side streets to descend and ascend. The whole walk took sixty-five minutes, and I was plenty tired.

As I made all these side trips, I was struck by the clarity of the woods. By this time in winter, the pin oaks are finally dropping their leaves. A few stubbornly cling, mostly to lower branches, but most are gone. The early budding trees–the Bradford pears, forsythia, red buds, and dogwoods–have not yet popped. Some might by next week, but not now. So this weekend is probably the one with the greatest clarity through the winter woods. Houses across the hollows, unseen most of the year, are obvious. We can see our distant neighbors’ backyard business.

I continue to look for this clarity in my writing career. Book? Articles? Fiction? Non-fiction? Op-ed? Bible studies? All of these I have tried, and I can see myself writing them all. The writing sages say build a platform first. If you have a platform, editors can’t hardly turn you down when submitting book-length queries. I’ve got platform building ideas, but keep hesitating to trigger them for fear they will sap all the creative time and energy I have.

Yet trigger them I must, if I expect to have any hope of publishing books with traditional, royalty paying publishers. In two future posts (perhaps not consecutive to this one), I’ll explain a couple of platform-building ideas I have, one old, one new, and use the blog as a sounding board for them.

ETA: I wrote the draft of this post Saturday night, intending to publish it Sunday afternoon. When I awoke this morning, deprived of an hour of sleep, I saw our huge Bradford pear in the backyard is now white. Overnight the buds popped. Our native woods don’t have many volunteer Bradford pears, but it does look as if I’m correct: this weekend should allow maximum clarity.

writer's platform, Writing

Change of Plans

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It always happens. Despite the best intentions of coming back to my topic in a day or two, I was unable to. With my wife gone I had some extra things to do around the house. Also, I put in some extra hours at the office relocating my work station. I was not under a deadline to do so, but I thought, once they assigned me the different space (and good space it is) I’d better make the move ASAP. Then, I was expecting to be home all last week, and gone today through Wednesday, helping our daughter, son-in-law, and grand baby move from Kansas City to Oklahoma City, but it turned out they needed me more last week, so I changed plans and drove north on Thursday. Thus, I blogged not.

Tonight, I’m also working on a change of plans in my writing. I see myself mostly a novelist. I have no platform–best defined as a ready-made audience to whom I can directly market any non-fiction ideas I have, so fiction seems right for me. Plus, the fiction ideas came to me first, and continue to come more frequently than do non-fiction. However, as hard as it is to break into fiction (non-fiction outsells fiction 8:1, or maybe 10:1), non-fiction seems an easier sell. But again, not having an established audience is a hindrance to breaking in there. So, I have been casting about, trying to figure out what to write, and it hit me: Bible studies, and small group study guides.

For sure, I lack credentials in this area, other than the experience teaching adult Sunday School. I’m currently teaching a study I planned and wrote, titled “The Dynamic Duo: Lessons From The Lives Of Elijah And Elisha.” That seemed to be something I could expand from my two page weekly handout into a full length Bible study. Then, a study we did previous to this was of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I was substitute teacher for that, and taught maybe 25 percent of it. We were hindered by lack of a good study guide. I found one I purchased through Amazon.com, but it was written for a high school level literature class, not for an adult Sunday School class or small group. So I thought “I should write the study guide we didn’t have for class.” I wrote four sample chapters, the beginning of a proposal for both studies, and went off to the Blue Ridge conference.

The good news is: an editor for a very good publishing house for this sort of material is interested in both! He asked me to get proposals to him by about June 13th. So, this week all fiction is shoved aside for the two proposals. I’m finding the writing difficult, and am having trouble concentrating. It is so different than writing the actual material. I plug away, get a little bit done, then find myself pulled away to mindless things. Hopefully taking time to do this blog post will move me back on track.

writer's platform, Writing

I Blog, Therefore I Am

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Herein I enter the Blogosphere, with my personal blog that will, hopefully, deal with my writing life as it develops, as well as other interests. With time, I may find that splitting this into different blogs is the better way to go. A separate blog for writing, for genealogy, for politics, for Christian interests. We’ll see how this goes.

At first, I will write some posts about my proposed newspaper column, Documenting America. This may be the first work I am able to get published. The Benton County Daily Record published four of these in 2003-2004 in the guest editorial program, which tells me it is probably a viable concept.

Later, I’ll talk about my fiction ideas, still later some non-fiction ideas, and of course poetry. Should anything I write appear to be nearing publication, I’ll talk about it more.

This blog will be the first piece of my web presence, later to be joined by a home page, specific, non-blog pages for specific items, and hopefully message boards for specific documents. Of course, at present all of this is pie-in-the-sky, but better to get the basics going now and build everything slowly as success demands. If nothing else, making frequent posts will be writing practice and discipline buildings. Having the blog to feed might just help me break the computer game habit. Possibly I’ll even add some engineering stuff.

Time to add a post I prepared a few weeks ago about Documenting America.